


A World Without Scar Tissue

by error_cascade



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel (House of M), Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Anti-Depressants, Character Study, Depression, Gen, Guilt, Marvel (What If), Mental Health Issues, Scars, Trauma, Wanda says "no more powers" and erases all superheroes, What If? House of M, comic canon references, unconventional narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 04:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15987323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/error_cascade/pseuds/error_cascade
Summary: Wanda may not have her powers, but she still feels compelled to create worlds. Escapism, trauma, and introspection.(Brief summary of comics canon in notes)





	A World Without Scar Tissue

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [MaximoffFicExchange2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MaximoffFicExchange2018) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Something in a modern setting with _any_ version of Wanda - comics, cartoons, or MCU - being introspective about trauma and scars, be they mental, physical or emotional. Two small phrase prompts as well: "Tracing scars" and "Tissue tucked into a cardigan sleeve". Make of them what you will. Perhaps some WandaVision fluff?
> 
> Ah, my poor prompter is receiving the most recursive of all fics, a oneshot based on a comics canonical AU. So basically, in House of M our darling Wanda creates a world where mutants are more prominent and #Magento was right. That world ends up collapsing and Magneto may sorta nearly beat Pietro to death. So Wanda says No More Mutants and reduces the world's mutant population to 10%. Or in this world, Wanda strips everyone of superpowers. So what does Wanda do without powers, without family, and with a lot of trauma? Read on, dear friends.
> 
> (Alternatively, read the comic as well: https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/What-If-House-of-M)

When Tony came, she wanted to turn him away. The philanthropist, the Invincible Iron Man, here to pick up her pieces. Wanda wanted to rip him to shreds, to watch him dissemble in front of her. She may not have powers anymore, but she wasn’t useless. She could draw blood; that’s what her family specialized in, apparently. The memory of Erik, beating into Pietro – she shoved it down. Compartmentalize. Tasha taught her that. 

She remembered Tony drinking himself to death on the streets, fortune stolen away. The endless complicated women he screwed, like that would fill the void. Staying sober. His penchant for picking up everyone’s problems, including his own. 

Wanda shouted at him. Scratched his face. Meant every word (lies). He gave her a place to stay, endless offers of funerals and voluntary hospitalization, medication and therapies. Apparently a decade of friendship is enough to make her the victim here. It burned a little, to know the one man who so self-consciously straddled the line between heroism and villainy, couldn’t see her role in this. She created a world and burned it and brought a new one to life in its place. 

***  
Wanda lived in a small townhouse, very suburban, very American. Tony was clever. Not a lot of mutant activity. Not a lot of anti-Roma sentiment. The façade of safety was in place, and none of the neighbours complained very much when they heard her screaming in the night, or shouting, or throwing pots and pans when the grief became too much and spilled over into scarlet rage. 

She missed her powers. She hated them, often. She hated them now. But she couldn’t sleep at night without the buzz of the universe in the background. 

Pietro stopped in, sometimes. Brought medicines that she took, sometimes. 

(Pietro had a scar on his face from Erik. She collapsed a whole world, and couldn’t fix the rot in them all.) 

*** 

So she lived in alternate worlds. It was her specialty, after all. 

***

Wanda & Pietro were utterly ordinary. Wanda taught at a community college, acting in local theatre as a hobby. Pietro was a welder who jogged daily. Their mother had passed long ago, but they kept in contact with their adoptive parents and cared for Erik together. Erik, kindly manipulative in his old age, always wanted the best for his children. Monsters didn’t invade. No one grew immune to the bizarre. A lovely fantasy. A world without scar tissue.

***  
It took her years to forgive Pietro. Or Erik. Or herself. 

On the days she doesn’t forgive herself, or doesn’t take her meds, or feels the loneliness seeping in her bones, she tucks the tissues in her cardigan sleeves (for the near inevitable tears) and sits on her perfect, suburban porch. The grey haze is her best friend. 

***

In some other world, she and Pietro live with Django and Marya. It’s better there. That isn’t real. 

***

The world is apparently happier now. Turns out heroic necessity was an illusion more talented than even she could create. She still feels guilty. All she sees is a world vulnerable to infinite threats. (To her.) (Or, the nasty voice in her head intones, maybe you don’t like to see your heroic sacrifices tallied to nothing.) 

She doesn’t. 

In one fell swoop, she lost her powers and her children and her dysfunctional family. 

***  
In one world, she doesn’t say “no more powers.” Just “no more.” 

***  
She may no longer be the master of reality. But there are real things, real things she needs to hold on to. She traces the scars on her legs and remembers Pietro and Erik and this monster world they created. Where instead of human supremacy, they just flipped the script. 

Was that grief? Evil? Maybe both. Wanda always did fancy herself regal, complicated. 

***  
Every night, she slips into a different world, where the chitauri or the kree or the skrulls or thanos or galactus invade, and discover nothing more than a few ex-superheroes in suits and the ISS. That world is not her intention, but she is forced to live in it. 

***  
She kept her eyes on the world. Not in the mystical or psychic sense, anymore. The newspapers and webpages would have to suffice. Wanda felt compelled to know, to know that the world was still turning in spite of her…manipulations. The answers were unexpectedly pleasant. She could watch Tony building his suits or Peter staring down villains with a bottle of web fluid. The world kept on turning. It turned even better as she withdrew from it. Her face and life belonged to the Scarlet Witch. Wanda was now the invisible woman (metaphorically, of course). 

***  
When she really wants to torment herself, she imagines her life as it is now, but with Erik and Pietro. 

Pietro supports them. Or at least, he managed to look un-heroic enough to work. Tony had quietly pushed her a comfortable amount of money. Erik brings her pills for the numbness. Some days she takes them. Some weeks she takes them. Then another day rolls on and here she is, still here. Here with traitors and a murderer for kin and memories of dead children. 

***  
Today, Wanda sits on the porch. Tissues in her scarlet cardigan. It occurs to her, slow and deadly, that this is how they punish super-villains. Later, Tony comes by, his hair greying. Some part of her wants to grin, ask him if he likes the silver fox look. That part of her is growing smaller by the day. 

Nothing quite seems real anymore. Wanda doesn’t feel like a human or a mutant. She feels like a faint ideal erroneously attached to a body. 

He offers her a paper. Its blueprints, for the Iron Witch. A suit designed to mimic her former powers. Someone else could wear it better. (Those days she barely got out of bed and had no one). She insisted he give the suit to someone else. He only said perhaps.


End file.
